Snapper and gummies constantJohn Joubert | First Published: February 2005

After a bumper spring season, summer has been a little less fruitful for offshore anglers. While there are still plenty of squid and ’couta about, not as many sharks as previous years have been reported.

A few large makos in the 150-250kg bracket have been caught, but there has been a noticeable absence of the bottle-sized fish in the 30-50kg range, which make up the bulk of mako captures at this time of year.

Water temps have levelled off of late at around 17.5°C, which is a little cool for this time of year.

A consolation to the lack of shark numbers is the consistent snapper and gummy shark fishing, which has seen good numbers of both in the 1-2 kg bracket and 4-12 kg bracket respectively.

Arrow squid have been very good inshore and on some days are making it hard to get a bait to the bottom.

Tiger and sand flathead have been very good for anglers wishing to get a great feed and successful techniques have changed a bit in recent years with soft plastics becoming popular as an alternative to using bait. When fishing soft plastics in deep water, longer leaders than normal on your typical ‘dropper’ type rigs can produce the goods. Soft plastics are even accounting for a few gummies as well.

Australian salmon have made a late arrival but are now about in good numbers in the Heads area. This is great for shark anglers wishing to get the best possible berley and have some light tackle fun on these fish which are as big as 4kg.

The odd yellowtail kingfish has been caught and once this report hits the stands should be a feasible target over the inshore reef systems of Torquay and Barwon Heads.

Tip: Work hard on your berley trails all day long. A constant trail is needed and vary it a bit with a few larger cubes dropped in intermittently to help raise deep feeding fish.